Earthbound
by Spylace
Summary: The typical formula of: A goes into heat and B follows. A is Jason. Naturally, B is Dick. Crossover with Dragonriders of Pern


**Title:** Earthbound  
**Summary:** The typical formula of: A goes into heat and B follows. A is Jason. Naturally, B is Dick. Crossover with Dragonriders of Pern**  
****Words:** 2500+**  
****Rating: **M**  
****Pairing:** Dick/Jason**  
****Notes:** I should really finish up my other stories. Unfortunately, no classes for me on Wednesday this week so the incentive to sit still and write forever is gone –shifty eyes–. Be gentle. I'll go shoot myself now.  
**Warning:** Unbetaed, implied rape and molestation, rape of a minor and my take at fluff. All mistakes are mine.

.

J'son impresses at the tender age of nine.

He doesn't like to talk about it.

Seven turns later, no one associates the tall dragonrider with the middling green sunning herself in the meadows, showing off her needle-sharp teeth whenever anyone ventures too close. People outside his weyr mistake him all the time for a wingleader or at least a brown rider, barmaids and little children thinking him a handsome hero from the old stories.

Yet every turn, he counts down the days till the rising of his green Haveth, the most controversial of dragons since wingleader Barbara's impression of the bronze Gordonth. He might have thought it _funny_had it happened to anyone else, a lord holder's son consigned to the simple pleasures of other men.

Except he doesn't deserve this—the taunts and jeers from when he is literally climbing out of his skin wanting just to touch. His dragon doesn't deserve this, always having to look twice before rising. Damien doesn't deserve this, being shamed for his behavior, ostracized by other holder-kin with their perfect little lives.

And Bruce, his father the lord of Roma hold, he doesn't deserve this.

But Jason is a creature of desire and a slave to his needs. Two or three times a turn, he is crippled and wanton with lust. Luckily for him, he has grown since the frightened boy of eleven when Haveth first rose, leaving him in the thick of peering eyes and baited words, fingers slipping past his belt and under his shirt.

He knows better now and sequesters himself away unless ambushed by Dinah or Babs. Dinah is the senior weyrwoman and Babs the weyrleader of Xanadu, no one dares to question whom they take to their beds and they are the only ones J'son trusts to do so because he no longer trusts himself.

Wingleader D'ick stares at him with familiar disgust in his eyes, stranded together in a shallow cave near the Southern Weyr, too far from home, too far from home and too depleted to resume their flight.

There are others with them, fragments of a wing that split up when the threads began to fall without warning catching them by surprise. The blues and browns are attentive to Haveth's needs, their thick hides flushing dark in time with her hums and flash of teeth, eyes swirling as though they might follow her through the hail of threads themselves.

But the thread is falling and his Haveth cannot fly, she cannot ferry him away and strand him on a rock where he'd at least have the safety of being alone. J'son shivers in spite of himself and Haveth, her hide dark like numbleaves, arches her neck in warning, her eyes whirling too fast to be fast to be perceived, lustful, wanting, threatened and angry all at once as she thrusts him behind her like a nesting queen, bright sparks scattering from her jaws like shooting stars.

As token acceptance of their past friendship, she allows D'ick to approach with the meager ration of food and water, never touching, never allowing himself to stare into the pearlescent glaze of Haveth's eyes as Greth growls nervously under his breath, pushing the other dragons back but unable to press forward.

The situation in the cave is dire, the green torn between curling around her rider and taking to the thread-scored skies. Haveth snaps bitterly at a wandering brown, slicing nose down to the bone. His rider blusters, rushes over and stops at his dragon's retreat, muttering threats and apologies all in the same breath.

J'son closes his eyes.

It won't be long now.

.

D'ick left when J'son was twelve, just before Haveth's first flight, back when J'son was Jay and was pretending to be strong as he went in between.

He serves at Thread's End Weyr, falls in love with Kory and her golden Andreth, befriends Roy and competes with him for the privilege of flying the young queen though all three of them end up in bed together in the end. He learns much in the Northern Continent where all legends of Xanadu Weyr, Breda and the gold Amaranth has withered to myth. The people he meets during his travels are intriguing, thinks him backwards in his thoughts and origins though he wants to point out it is they who are backwards in their practices.

Seven turns pass before he thinks to return; seven turns has not changed Xanadu Weyr in any discernible way. At Roma Hold, Bruce greets him stoic and ageless like a being carved from stone. But he is glad to find that Dinah and Babs are together officially now that the bronze Gordonth has caught his golden queen.

He lands and crashes into a familiar-unfamiliar face, a girl at his elbow peering up at him curiously through a veil of sun-yellow hair. He thinks him one of the new wingleaders for he is young and smells of hard work. His mind draws only a blank when the young rider graces him with a curt nod and a toothy smile—"_Dick_".

Only few people ever called him by his real name, a deliberate extension in the middle. One was Bruce and the other, little Jason. But the other man is gone before he can shout, a stretch of shadow across the dune, the lake at the horizon where there is none.

A little while later, Haveth rises and the occasion is extravagant as that of a queen's. Since the ninth pass, the fifty years of reprieve thinking that the thread would never return, the gold and green cycles even out. The queens no longer hatch massive clutches but rise once per turn and greens after, several at once as though appeasing the sore losers of the long flight.

J'son himself is almost never seen. He disappears days before Haveth's hide darken to their emerald glow and every senior member of Xanadu Weyr swear themselves to secrecy when he asks, frustrating D'ick even further. He asks Dinah and is repudiated on the spot. Greth grumbles for days after.

He thinks that J'son has gone back to Roma hold to his father yet he has not and remains missing.

It isn't until later he learns why.

He sees Haveth spiriting her rider away as blood begins to boil in her body. D'ick wonders what happened to the little boy who would shadow his every step, asking him to teach him the song and the dance of the world.

Then the threads come.

There is nowhere for J'son to hide.

.

Canarenth rises but no one will fly for her except Gordonth.

Haveth, who was Canarenth's later nestmate rises after in concordance, soliciting the attentions of failed browns and swift blues like a miniature queen. Greth snorts in approval and flings his massive body into the air, outstripping the others, gleefully shadowing Haveth as she taunts the bronze with a flash of her jade belly. D'ick muffles a cry when J'son sticks his tongue down his throat, ecstatic yet bewildered as he quickly pulls away.

He sinks down to the floor as the greenrider runs off confirming his suspicions. And as their dragons fly in dizzying loops and spirals down from the clouds, D'ick touches himself and comes with a cry, striping his hand and lower belly, sullen and somewhat distraught.

When the dragons land, he cinches the belt tight enough to castrate himself.

Greth laughs lightly in his mind.

Haveth sits leonine in the grass like a broody queen, eyeing D'ick like a tunnel snake after her clutch. He remembers that the green had always been an excitable thing, a perfect companion to J'son who got into mischief as easily as he breathed. He did not know that seven turns was such a long time, enough to press a nine-year-old into becoming a man.

D'ick himself has grown a taller, gained new scars, songs and tricks to entertain the weyrlings of senior gold Basth's last clutch. J'son avoids him religiously which suits them fine and puts Greth in an impressive sulk when the greenrider's dragon does not deign to grace him with a single look. He thought he could handle it, whatever this is.

He can't.

.

Haveth goes into heat, pinned against the damp walls of the shallow cave, ignoring the interests of the blues and browns and the lone bronze who attempts at being the voice of reason crowded into a hole where no flight will take place. She lowers her head and growls in warning when B'jan's blue coquettishly brushes up against her side like the maids at a bar, tired of craftsmen and harpers as their usual fair.

Questioningly, she noses her rider as the rest close in.

J'son opens his eyes.

Thread comes down like rain but Haveth rises, scorching them out of her way as she makes her desperate flight inbetween. Without a second thought, D'ick rides Greth and follows, barely reorienting themselves on nothing but memory and instinct before landing hard in a small grove, a tiny place by Roma Hold left unvisited since his departure, just enough space for his bronze to stand on hind legs.

D'ick tumbles onto the jungle floor like a clipped wherrie, sucking air as dead thread falls messily from above, dusting them all bone-white and grey. He crawls over to where J'son lies, shivering at his appearance, his lips tinged blue from cold but angry like no rider is before his dragon's rising. And this time, it's D'ick who initiates the first kiss, Greth bugling in answer as Haveth flies towards the crematoria in the sky.

He pulls J'son into his lap and licks his red mouth open, fingers grasping at his clothes, pleased at the jump in his pulse and the heat of his skin as they curl into the earth like a pair of parenthesis entwined. The greenrider is bigger than him, no longer the gangly weyrling begging him for songs and stories. But right now, he wants D'ick as much as D'ick wants him, or at least his body does and this has to be enough.

He sucks on his fingers, three at once as he rolls the younger rider onto his back, cursing and fighting as they tear at wet clothes, his sodden breeches pushed down to his ankles, goosebumps lining is knees. Entrenched in heat, they sink past the first knuckle as J'son sighs like the whisper of a breeze or something complete. And it breaks something inside of him to realize that he might have never known—might have never even guessed.

It's too late now but he palms the exposed skin for thread burns or other hurts, anything to starve off the inevitable. Haveth does not fly far, tethered to her rider by an invisible thread. But Greth was never meant to fly in such cramped quarters and struggles to keep afloat, his wings shredding the lush canopy as D'ick rocks into J'son like a boat at sea.

J'son does little more than to groan at the breech, his body taut and wanting as he struggles to hold him close, thighs brutal as though trying to squeeze his heart out from his ribs, almost lucid and welcoming as he pulls him down for a second kiss. Dragons decide and the rider complies but he had never wished so hard for the reverse to be true.

Greth roars triumphantly in his mind.

.

"Why?" D'ick croaks, his voice utterly wrecked as he stared up at the sky framed by their dragons' wings. "Why did you come here?"

J'son is quiet, his eyes the color of glass. His lips move and his words trail after but it isn't until Greth drops his forked tail in his lap that he hears: "I wanted you."

His anguish tears out of his chest in the form of a cry.

"Like this?"

"Whatever I can get." He agrees, soothing his green with a mental image as D'ick waits, for answers, regrets, something. J'son has nothing of value except quick fists and a healthy fear of a queen's rising or getting caught in the open without either Dinah, Steph or Selina to jump behind. He doesn't think it makes him a less of a man but begging a stranger for relief does. Or when a stranger takes him solely a boast that he has bedded the lord holder's son, not even him as a greenrider but as a spite towards his father. Is it any wonder that he runs instead of spreading legs, bending over a table, a chair or a convenient counter like everyone expects him to?

Maybe he says it out loud; maybe it bleeds through from him to Haveth to Greth to D'ick because the bronze rider straddles him, eyes wide in alarm. His voice is disbelieving as he leans over, framing his face with his arms. He is warm and J'son would have him again if D'ick wanted, even if it's only for Haveth's rise.

"You don't think I want you."

"You don't." J'son reminds him, running his fingers down the other man's spine. Seven turns since they parted last, seven turns since he was a weyrling underfoot and D'ick on the cusp of manhood. He remembers wanting him the day before he left, Haveth of age and he too young, ignorant in the ways of the weyr and why his body betrayed him against D'ick. Then D'ick was gone and he had no one except men frustrated at another queen won.

"When Haveth rose, I kissed you."

"Babs told me what happened." D'ick babbles as though hurrying through a song or a story unsuitable for young ears. He says quietly, "I thought you did it because I was convenient."

J'son laughs as a weight lifts off his chest and shoulders, leaving him free to pull D'ick close and breathe into his neck. "Don't worry sweetheart." He quips cheekily, licking a short stripe across his collarbone. "I respect you for your mind."

D'ick hugs him fiercely, shaking a little as he peppers his throat with small kisses.

'Sleep' Haveth advises, tired after her flight. Greth hums his assent, curled around her like a solid ring of metal, sated and unwilling to move.

"Are we okay then?" D'ick asks when their dragons have gone to sleep, their snores a warm static in their minds.

"Shards no." He snorts and D'ick looks hurt, delicate and fragile around the edges like a being made of glass. "The girls are going to be insufferable about this." He explains, eliciting a strangled yelp when he kneads the bronzerider's thighs. "But I'll live."

"Yeah." D'ick breathes, rolling into his grip. "We're going to be fine."


End file.
